In his memoir Better to Cry Now: Shaping the Flow of a Gay Black Man (Greenleaf Book Group, September 2024), Palm Springs resident Geoffrey Newman takes the reader on a journey through his storied career as a performer and educator.
The book reads like a curriculum vitae. The author adds crafts to his toolbox—and building blocks in his identity as a gay Black man—as the years go by.
Titled after sage advice from Newman’s mother, Better to Cry Now traces a life of breaking barriers, overcoming obstacles and finally finding acceptance and security. From his early days as one of the few Black students at what was intended to be an all-white school during the 1950s, to becoming the dean of the arts program at Montclair State University, the book is a history ride through an era of great upheaval in America.
Although Newman was raised in an era when neither racial nor gender equality could be taken for granted, he found ways to navigate his intersectionality. Newman writes about his sexual awakening in candid—and even graphic—terms. Early in the book, he describes the discovery of an unspoken network of “bisexuals” who were content to live “perfectly heterosexual during the day and very homosexual at night.”
He’d been a natural actor since his first leading role, a skill that would make the compromise almost seamless: “I had a public persona and a private persona. … I found that many others, especially performers, embraced this philosophy of duality,” Newman writes. “When I went off to college in Ohio, I continued to keep my two worlds apart but lived each to the fullest: Black man acting white, gay man acting straight.”
During an interview with the Independent, Newman said that when he became a college professor, and his responsibilities grew, it became clear that he would have to live his truth. In Switzerland, while preparing a young Black student to take on a leading role, he had a revelation. “I would have never really (previously) believed it was almost critical that I not hide who I am, but I (learned to) lead with that, and if that’s a problem, then that’s their problem; that’s not mine.”
He talked about teaching at Howard University, where he’d previously been a student.
“(That) experience of teaching became very profound and life-altering,” Newman said. “It is such a melting pot of countries and ethnicities and cultures. … What I learned was that there wasn’t one way—there wasn’t living black or white, living straight or living gay. The more I taught students coming from different cultures, the more it reinforced how important that was. Those students brought all of that background with them, and I wanted to shape that into strengths.”
Though he never explicitly says it in Better to Cry Now, it’s clear Newman’s racial identity was always the more problematic truth to navigate. As the product of mixed-race parents and grandparents, color consciousness was a cause for anxiety: “I always worried: I am not white enough, and my hair is not straight enough,” he writes.
In the mostly white world of arts and academia, his ambiguous ethnicity allowed him to fit in. But when the civil rights movement took a turn toward more militancy in the mid-1970s, Newman had to make a choice. He decided to write scripts and produce shows that addressed inequality and gave his students a platform to bring those issues center-stage before national and international audiences.
He writes: “Thirteen years as a faculty member taught me something vital: One can find strength in adversity, learn from conflict and rise above and beyond obstacles. … I discovered a way to speak my truth through my art, found my voice as a person of color and continued to grow as a teacher.”
Writing the book took Newman back through time, from busking across Europe as an undergraduate; to graduate school at Wayne State University, one of the nations’ premiere theater programs; to performing on stages in Switzerland and Germany.
Newman would rise in academic circles at a dizzying pace. As a sought-after professor, he was recruited to launch a theater program at Wabash College in Indiana, before returning to Howard University, where he would be appointed chair of the drama department.
By the time he retired from Montclair in 2012, Newman had gained a roster of students, friends and colleagues that included Sammy Davis Jr., Lynn Whitfield, Howard Hesseman, Melba Moore, Phylicia Rashad and Mikhail Baryshnikov, to name just a few. The book has plenty of pictures from his days at the center of the entertainment world.
The reception for Better to Cry Now has been “overwhelming,” said Newman. In February, he’s scheduled to sign books at Just Fabulous in Palm Springs. A signing is also planned at Barnes and Noble in Palm Desert, and he’ll appear at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books in April.
Newman still holds the position of dean emeritus at Montclair’s College of the Arts. He will return there in the spring to promote the book and has signings planned at his alma maters of Wabash College and Howard University.
Since 2012, after a lifetime of traveling abroad and across the Americas, Newman and his husband, Ed, have made Palm Springs their home. The couple will celebrate their 50th anniversary this summer.
Living here has been an eye-opening experience, Newman said. “The thing about Palm Springs, unlike any place we’ve ever been, is the inclusiveness of the environment. This is the first place we have ever been in our lives where we are not an anomaly.”
Newman said he was touched to see how friends and neighbors came out to honor his celebrated career when the book was released.
“The neighborhood association announced a signing event, and (everyone) came—straight, gay, white, black,” Newman said. “I didn’t have to go into a gay environment or a Black environment or a senior environment in order for that to happen.
“It’s really the only (place) I’ve ever been where it’s not clique-ish. It’s really a mixed bag of everything, and all of those people coming together really are accepting of each other. I don’t know if I would have found that so easily happening in New Jersey or Washington or any other bigger city—but that happens in Palm Springs all the time.”
